


tracks lead me far away

by splatticus



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Angst, M/M, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-11
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2020-01-05 12:57:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18366485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/splatticus/pseuds/splatticus
Summary: They were supposed to be walking the same path.





	tracks lead me far away

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nadler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nadler/gifts).
  * Inspired by [knowledge determines destiny](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11875734) by [Nadler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nadler/pseuds/Nadler). 



He and Kari make a production of it, him opening his hotel room to greet an old teammate, painfully polite despite having an audience made up of an empty hallway. Antti extends his hand. Kari takes it.

"Hello, old friend," Kari tells him, his smile warm. He doesn't let go until Antti steps back to let him in. It's only when he closes the hotel door that Antti notices the four-pack dangling from his other hand, a local microbrew whose label he recognizes. Always Kari with the good beer.

"I was going to offer you a drink, but I see you already brought your own," he says.

Somehow this startles Kari, and he flushes as he breaks eye contact. He says, "I figured you would enjoy an old favorite. Something you wouldn't have found in Montreal."

"Good instinct. But there's also craft beer up north, you know." He gestures at one of the armchairs, and Kari sits down promptly.

"I don't doubt that there is."

He can't quite make himself ask how Kari is doing, in case he answers that he's doing spectacularly well. Or says that he's struggling. Either way, Antti will have to stop himself from answering back with considerable bitterness. Antti thought he was the one farther removed from feeling, who hasn't had his empathy compromised by Mozart, but somehow it's him who has a head buzzing with white noise, whose only coherent thought is how Kari is wearing his hair longer these days.

Kari is looking down at his lap, still gripping the handle of the four-pack. "I know you're angry."

"Do you even know why at all?"

Kari tilts his head and finally looks at him, his blue eyes clear. "Do you?"

For the past four months, Antti has operated with the idea that he does know. He has played mad during his starts for the Canadiens, and for the few times he has played in relief. Sometimes it works; most of the time it doesn't. His baseline frequency may be higher than the general population, but there is a reason why goalies reach this level. Their luck almost always cancels his own. Antti doesn't have enough hate for Kari to elevate his game that way.

"I though you could've joined me in the East," Antti says, his voice clipped.

"There's nothing for me out East."

It's bullshit and Antti knows it. He's heard enough around the league to know that the rash of injuries early in the season made several teams clamor for a goalie to sign. Knows at least one team who did make a call to Kari's agent, just in case. But no, even when Antti suggested a simple move up north when he signed with Pittsburgh, just to test the environment, open the possibility of a late-season's signing. It was Dallas for Kari.

That small suggestion, built from hope, turned into resentment. Turned in four months of no contact.

Antti remembers how at peace he felt last year as he signed his buyout, faxing those papers to his agent using the office in Kari's Helsinki home, before walking back into Kari's room and slipping back into his bed. That simple act had turned Antti into a journeyman, meant to wander the desert that is the NHL's goaltending landscape--and he did, three teams in a span of four months, a league-wide joke until he finally landed in Montreal and was welcomed by Jordie Benn's rueful smile. But he felt fine because he thought, since they shared a frequency, that eventually Kari would be there too, walking alongside him. For long painful stretches in Dallas, it was the only thing keeping him sane, Kari's eyes looking back at him, and even the phantom of it was enough to get him through one waiver assignment after another.

Kari, who backed Ben Bishop's first year as a Star with his steady positivity, who stayed the night in Antti's hotel room both times that Montreal faced Dallas. Who served out the rest of his contract, and at the end of it refused to sign a new one. Kari looked at the life Antti is living and turned away from it.

Kari, who wants nothing to do with him hard enough that he's canceling Antti's wish for him.

"Was it the weather? Did Atlanta and Dallas spoil you forever?"

Kari grins at his sad attempt at humor. They are both trying very hard. Antti takes a step back, feeling more secure when the wall touches his back. He's still too close to Kari--backups don't get large hotel rooms. "You're going to ask me to understand you." Again. And he still doesn't.

Kari's eyebrows are a knot of frustration as he says, "I'm not done wrong by life, you know. I don't have anything else to prove--"

"Of course not." Antti scoffs. Because it must mean that Kari doesn't feel the same, that they aren't supposed to walk this journey together. But they aren't.

"That's not what I mean at all." Then Kari says, "Me being here. We both know it means something."

It makes him flinch, despite how softly Kari says it. Because if Antti had wanted it hard enough, Kari wouldn't be here, looking up at him.

"Are you going to throw that to my face? That I want you?"

"N-no, never that." 

"Then what?" he demands.

Kari's lips thin. "This morning I texted Jordie for the name of this hotel, then got into my car and just drove. I told myself, if Jordie doesn't reply, if I get a flat tire, I'll accept it. I won't impose my will. But then I'm here, and you're talking to me. I still don't know what made me say no, but it has never been about not wanting to be with you."

Then he moves, dropping the beer, frighteningly still one moment and right against Antti's body the next. There's still this goaltender's reflex thrumming inside him--how can he think there's nothing left--and it's focused on cupping the back of Antti's head and pulling him forward.

That's the thing with him and Kari--they resonate. The perfect ringing pitch for shattering a crystal, except the shattered thing is his resolve.

He puts his arms around him and gets lost tracing the muscles of Kari's back, one memory tripping over another, past and future, tangent after tangent. A small bead of sweat running down the back of his neck makes Antti think of the cold glass of orange juice that Kari will leave empty tomorrow morning, makes him think of those hopeful drives he used make from Vantaa to Kari's place, the taste of Kari which took him by surprise that first time, the shudder running through Kari as he looked down at Antti on his knees after Sochi.

Through another drawn-out kiss, he feels hands moving over the loop of his pants, Kari's fingers flicking open the buttons. Thinks, as the sharp sound of the zipper getting lowered fills the empty room, a man like him should be allowed one lapse in judgment. Thinks, _This might get me to snap out of this doomed thing I keep hoping for._

"Don't turn me away," Kari whispers against his neck.

He nods, and shudders. He knows many things about irresistible forces and immovable objects but he has tonight at least.

*


End file.
